OPTIMAL DESIGN OF CANTILEVER RETAINING WALLS USING RAY OPTIMIZATION METHOD

Earth retaining structures are referred to those structures which can control backfill
heights that are just about to slide. Some examples of these structures are gravity and cantilever
retaining walls. The cantilever retaining walls were utilized after the introduction of the
reinforced-concrete construction technique. In the previous studies, the optimization of the
retaining walls has been accomplished by quasi-static methods; however, in this paper a pseudodynamic
approach is utilized. The advantage of the pseudo-dynamic analysis is that the phase
difference effects and time can be entered in the design of retaining walls as the dynamic
characteristics of the earthquake loading. Here, by optimizing a cantilever retaining wall via a
recently developed method, so-called Ray Optimization, the design controlling parameters are
investigated. Ray Optimization method is a multi-agent optimization method which is inspired
from the concept of light refraction. In this method by moving the agents to new positions, the
optimal solution is found.